Love, Simon – It wasn’t like this in my day (sadly)

There have been plenty of teen romantic comedies over the years and, being a cynical man in his forties, I have long since outgrown them and do my best to steer clear, knowing that I am definitely NOT the target audience for this type of film, therefore I shouldn’t really be commenting on it.  Nowadays, films are doing their best to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘diverse’ in their casting/storylines.  Many times this feels forced and comes across as simply a gimmick to drum up a little extra word-of-mouth to help promote the film. ‘Love, Simon’ so could have been one of those, but I’m glad to say that it’s not.

A teenage boy (Simon, believe it or not!) is coming to the end of his senior school and leads a pretty normal life, apart from the fact that he’s secretly gay.  However, his plans of ‘coming out’ in his own time (possibly at college) are thrown upside down when he starts engaging in online correspondence with another – apparently gay – student.  This leads to him rethinking his plans, so to speak.

It’s nice to see this kind of story given some sort of big-screen treatment.  If you went to school back in my day (80s/90s) then everyone was heterosexual and no one was gay.  Statistics prove again and again that that is impossible and ‘no one’ is gay simply because no one is going to commit what (again, back in my day) was ‘social suicide’ by ‘coming out.’ Now – thankfully – I understand that school-age children/young adults are much more at ease which letting people know who they really are without fear of negative reprisal (although ‘Love, Simon’ does show that side of people’s reaction to such news from a fellow student). 

It’s a bit of a ‘who-done-it’ really.  I know I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help but think of ‘Scream’ while I watched it.  Although, technically, the films are nothing alike, ‘Scream’ makes you guess who the killer is from a cast full of potential young suspects, whereas ‘Love, Simon’ sees if you can figure out who the other student Simon is speaking to all the way through (for the record, I got the answer wrong in both films!).

The young cast are all believable as friends and their banter is the type you’d expect among youngsters, plus there are plenty of swipes at the ‘youth of today’ that us ‘oldies’ will enjoy.  The only real ‘weak link’ in terms of the casting was the one main representative of the teachers at the school, the vice principal.  He was just way too wacky to be believable.  The way he behaved just wasn’t how a teacher would (or at least, once again, I’m going off my own experience back in the day – feel free to correct me if this is ‘normal’ for a teacher!).  In my opinion he was more like Krusty the Clown from ‘The Simpsons’ than someone who was supposed to educate.  Plus I’d have probably ended the film about ten minutes earlier than it did – you’ll probably see where I mean if you watch it.

But, those were just minor gripes, the film is excellent and uplifting, even for an old cynic like myself.  School life wasn’t like this in my day and, if this is the way it’s going, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that